


The External Injuries

by TwilightDeviant



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, First Aid, Post 2x04, Unrequited Crush, art included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:56:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightDeviant/pseuds/TwilightDeviant
Summary: Flynn can patch Lucy up on the outside. That, he can do.Necessary missing scene for the end of 2.04.





	The External Injuries

Flynn familiarized himself with the bunker the day he moved in. He memorized its every corner with a keen eye during casual strolls. Lucy did not doubt he could draw every room through recall if he tried. Because of that, he knew exactly where to lead her, exactly where their little medical bay was nestled.  
  
It was a medium room, eight by ten feet. There was one medical exam table shoved almost against the wall, but it was dragged out from the corner to give an angle and access. Across from it was a line of upper and lower cabinets, old metal stocked fresh with necessary supplies. The light over the room was as fluorescent and impersonal as most of the bunker. Flynn let go of Lucy’s arm so he could doff his leather duster and wash his hands in the sink. He gestured for her to climb up onto the table. She managed.  
  
“You have medical training?” She assumed that was the purpose of him taking her there. Flynn was going to doctor the wound given her by the prematurely ended Justice Hathorne.  
  
“Learned on the job,” he said over his shoulder.

Lucy used her right hand to push and pull the clasps of her bodice until they popped. She parted the stiff burgundy fabric all the way down her hips, where it opened completely. The white undershirt suddenly felt very thin, waiting to be witnessed by another. There was no good way to shrug out of the top, and it hurt when she tried. One hand could not reach across the other without pulling back the tear of skin.

“Hey, hey,” Flynn chided, “stop. Just stop.” He stepped towards her and put his hands on the collar of her shirt. “All right?” He asked permission before removing her clothes. What a gentleman.

Lucy nodded.

Flynn brought the long sleeve down her right arm first to give plenty of slack for the injured one. He untied his makeshift bandage from around the sleeve. “Now we just have to hope this godforsaken _rag_  didn’t infect it,” he muttered.

Lucy did not worry. They were in the present now, and the present had antibiotics.

Flynn pulled the ruined, bloodied bodice off her wounded arm, and Lucy tried not to look as blood flowed past the sleeve of her undershirt and down her arm. Flynn was quick to apply a compress.

“You got that?” He waited for her to apply pressure to her own wound. Lucy pressed on the folded gauze with her good hand.

Flynn busied himself opening drawers and putting on latex gloves. He brought out a tray of sealed, pre-packaged syringes.

“No fear of needles, I hope?”

There was no reality where Lucy could say yes, could present herself as anything but fearless to Garcia Flynn.

She was almost hanged an hour ago. What could a needle do to that? How could it ever hope to compare?

“No,” Lucy said, telling the truth, a fresh truth.

“Good.” Flynn opened the plastic wrapping on the syringe and took the lid off its tip. He threw his garbage in the floor, uncaring, at least for the moment, to clean up after himself in a place so derelict. “Ease up.” Lucy pulled back the gauze, and he stabbed her just below the cut. It was a thin needle, and she barely felt its penetration. She did not watch as Flynn injected the anesthetic. “All right.” He tossed the used syringe on the countertop instead of the floor, mindful to the gross reputation of its kind. “Give it a minute.”

Lucy held pressure to the wound while Flynn ran water over a cloth and located antiseptic wipes. He used the cloth first, cleaning away the trails of wet and dried blood. It stung, and Lucy hissed. Flynn said nothing. He did not tell her to toughen up. The alcohol hurt worse.

“Can we get an actual doctor down here?” Flynn asked her.  
  
“Why?” Lucy was afraid to look at her own arm. “Is it that bad?”

“Deep cut,” he observed. “I can patch this, but you might... want a second opinion. Get the proper orders on any rehab, prevent lasting damage. Same old drill.” It was rehearsed rhetoric to him and a new practice for her. “Tell them to bring you a sling while you’re at it. You’re gonna want to keep the arm supported.” He pulled his hands away and sorted through his tray of gathered supplies. “If Rittenhouse jumps again any time soon, I believe you’ll be sitting that one out, Lucy.”  
  
“No.” It was nothing. It was a cut. Taking down Rittenhouse was more important. She was needed.  
  
“Yes,” Flynn argued. “You got hurt, and now... you let the damn thing heal.” He knew more about major injuries than Lucy. “Don’t need you being useless later.”  
  
Sometimes she wondered if that was all he cared about, her usefulness. Would she matter to Flynn if she had nothing for him?  
  
Would he leave her like everyone else?  
  
“A doctor will... give you a better idea of what it can take.” Flynn tried to reassure her, to authorize her for service, but they knew the likely outcome. “Can you lie down?”

“What?”

“You’re still bleeding,” Flynn told her. “Lie on your right side, get the cut above your heart.”

“Oh, uh, okay.” Lucy tried to comply.

Leaning back felt like a loss of control, especially without both hands to ease her down. Flynn grabbed her good arm and put his other hand between her shoulder blades. Slowly, with strong hands and firm control, he lowered her onto the table. He helped her roll onto her side.

“You feel this?” Flynn flicked the skin around his injection site. It tingled.

“A little,” Lucy answered. She stared at paint flaking off yellow brick. “Go ahead.” She wanted to look strong. She needed to not look weak. “Do it.”

“Suit yourself.” Flynn respected her determination instead of challenging it. “Okay, so... what do you want?” he asked, trying levity to make her feel better. ”You want maybe a lightning bolt, your initials, the word ‘witch’?” He held a curved, threaded needle like a tattoo artist about to undertake his new project.  
  
Lucy gave a polite chuckle when she did not want to, as reward for his effort. “Uh, regular stitches,” she answered. “Just a... straight row.”  
  
“Bit boring, but all right,” he smiled.  
  
The needle hovered like a swinging guillotine, and she did not anticipate its drop.  
  
“Relax your arm,” Flynn told her. Lucy released the tension she held in the muscle, even though it hurt to do so. “That’s it,” he commended. “Just like that.” He pressed the needle against her skin but did not pierce her, not yet. “I’ll do the first one on three, all right, so you know when it’s coming.”  
  
Lucy nodded. “All right.” She took a deep breath and prepared.  
  
He counted. “One—”  
  
“Ah!”  
  
Flynn went in early, and Lucy felt like a gullible child. Of course he did.  
  
The first stitch was pulled through both sides of skin and drawn together. “Not so bad,” he said, “right?”  
  
It was unpleasant. It was a smaller prick upon a larger stab, pain upon pain, even with the anesthetic. “No. Not so bad.”  
  
Lucy hated it the entire time he worked, one stitch beside another, all the way over in a row that went far longer than she wanted. The fingers of her right hand clenched and dug into her palm.  
  
“Wyatt,” Flynn spoke, taking advantage of her distracted mind. He stuck again with the needle. The man knew how to get answers, even when his actions resembled medical necessity over torture. “Bit of a... cool reception, huh?”  
  
“It’s nothing,” Lucy dismissed.  
  
“Good.” It was what he wanted to hear. Having heard it, Lucy assumed that was the end of his probing. “But let’s just say,” he pressed, “it was something. What might that something be?”  
  
“Leave it alone.” Her defensiveness spoke volumes in three words.  
  
Flynn understood too much and was too perceptive. “Should I call out numbers,” he coolly suggested, “and you let me know when I’ve picked the right... base?”  
  
“Stop,” Lucy pleaded.  
  
Flynn ignored her. “First?” She said nothing. “Second?” She said nothing. “Third?” he called with growing trepidation, drawing out the syllable. She said nothing. Flynn licked his lips and clicked his tongue. He wanted to say, “Home run?” as much as Lucy wanted to hear him say it. She tensed at the words, and Flynn had his answer. “Uh-huh.”  
  
“He wasn’t married then,” Lucy defended of herself. It was easier to focus on the least important aspect of what happened and what was happening.  
  
“No,” Flynn murmured, “of course he wasn’t.” He knew her better than that. He would never throw such an insult or even make the assumption.  
  
“It’s none of your business,” she reminded them both.

“No,” he spoke, “of course it isn’t.” He wanted to make it his business, but he had no claim over her personal life, no matter how much he might want to assert one. So long as Lucy could compartmentalize her feelings and get the job done, Flynn would push his down as well. He drew a deep and noisy inhale. “Almost done.” He stabbed through her again.  
  
Whether he did not inject her with a strong enough dose or whether there was no way to numb it completely, Lucy felt him working in and out of her arm the entire time. It hurt, but the initial cut hurt worse. Flynn used forceps as he went, making constant knots with the thread to keep one section from loosening while another tightened— as well as keep the whole thing coming undone if she popped one. That was how he explained it anyway. Lucy was comforted to hear him say it. Flynn was no doctor, but she felt confident in his ability to at least patch her up. However, even with experience, the pain never dulled completely, and the needle never turned less sharp. It took Lucy to the brink of endurance and ended just before she could take no more.

Flynn cut the last thread.

“Congratulations. You’ll live,” he announced, “witchy woman.” Alcohol burned through the cut again as he took no chances towards infection. Lucy bit her lip until it was over. Flynn raised her arm up to wrap a proper bandage. Gloves snapped as he pulled them off at last, those red-tinged hands of latex. “Come on.” He helped her sit up again. Lucy hated being dependent. She endured the humiliation, knowing, hoping he did not judge her. Flynn stood on the floor in front of her and admired his own handiwork. “Try not to get any more of those,” he ordered. He was more concerned than he wanted to pretend. “I happen to be perfectly fine with us not matching up and down.”

Implication and distant memory made Lucy’s hand hesitate before reaching for his arm. She touched over the outer muscle of his left bicep, over the healed and dragging scar of a gunshot wound, a musket ball from 1780, a scar in the same place as hers.

“Would take you awhile,” he remarked in a soft voice, careful not to startle her, “to touch them all.”  
  
“Are you all right?” Lucy thought to ask, thought to remember. “Your... You were stabbed.” She dropped her hand and turned her gaze to his abdomen, to the stab wound Rittenhouse gave him in prison. “You did a lot of moving back there.”  
  
“Hurts like a son of a bitch,” he confided with a grin. “Don’t think I opened it. I’ll check later.” If he tore open his own stitches, he did not want to examine them in front of her.  
  
Doors slammed and items clattered around as he ransacked the rusted metal cabinets once more.  
  
“Nothing stronger than over-the-counter,” he regretted to inform. There were no opioids. He opened a bottle and shook pills into his hand. “Tell the doctor to bring you something with a prescription.” He held out his hand and Lucy put hers beneath to catch the pills he dropped. “Take two of these and call me in the morning,” he said with a wink. However many were left in Flynn’s hand, he swallowed for himself and his own strains.  
  
He got Lucy a drink of water from the sink. It was in such a small paper cup that she could not take it without their fingers touching over one another’s. Lucy swallowed the pills and stale water.  
  
“Thank you,” she murmured, “for saving me.” She did not want to confess to her fears in the execution line, valid fears that he would leave her at the hanging tree to fend for herself. That was their average work day. Flynn put Lucy in dangerous situations and trusted her to get herself out, over and again. Not this time.  
  
“Mm-hm,” Flynn hummed in reply, pretending his actions in Salem were obvious and standard. “After all, it’s not like 17th century New England is where I always dreamed of living out my days.” He played up the idea that Rufus, the pilot, was his priority. It was better than laying himself bare for her. “Too much left to do,” he continued, rambling, “here, there, then...”

“How do you do it?” Lucy asked, an earnest question, a plea for advice.

“Do what?”

“Keep going.” It was not until Lucy’s situation deteriorated and deteriorated again that she could recognize how hard it was to keep moving forward, how getting out of bed became its own epic. “How do you— How...” Lucy covered her face with her good hand to force down tears. She could not cry in front of him. She would not. “I’ve lost... everything.” And now, she lost Wyatt as well.

Flynn dipped his head down to the floor. He stared at stained and dusty concrete. “Yes.” He agreed with her in one word. Lucy lost everything. Flynn lost everything. They were the same.

They lost, and they were lost.

Flynn had no answer, only another question. “What happens,” he posed, “if you don’t... keep going?”

Lucy let her hand come off her face. She inhaled with a sniffling breath. “Nothing.” Nothing would improve. It would stay the same on a prayer, but more likely, it would worsen.

All they had was the next step. They had to take it, even when their feet collapsed beneath them. Then, they had to crawl.

“We’ll get them back.”

Lucy’s head popped up to look at him. It was the first time he ever showed concern for her loss, and it came in a promise to bring Amy back along with his family. The world was no longer Flynn’s pain against hers, where one had to win even if the other lost. As partners, they both had to succeed. The gesture was so simple, so pathologically human, that it should not have touched Lucy as much as it did. But perhaps, she thought, it was nice to have someone consider her a priority again.

The exam table was taller than her legs. Lucy was not eye-level with Flynn, but she was nearer than nature put them. He was so close in that tender moment. His guard was down. His eyes met hers and his mind saw her thoughts.

Lucy pressed forward, possessed by a very idiotic and impulsive idea, but she was determined to commit to it.

Flynn turned his head at the last second, making her miss. Lucy’s lips met air, and she was a humiliated fool.

“Lucy,” he cautioned in gentle breaths against her cheek, “let’s not... do something we’ll regret.”

She could never be his regret. He did not want to be hers.  
  
“No,” she insisted. “No, I want this.”  
  
“You want a rebound,” he countered, “because Wyatt is being a jackass.” Lucy knew how Flynn felt about her, and now he knew she knew. “Believe it or not,” he said, “I do have a little more self-respect than that, just a bit.” Flynn was strong enough to deny himself what he wanted, no matter how badly he wanted it, if it came to him in the wrong way. He did not want to be the distraction Lucy used to ignore internal pains. He wanted it to mean something more. If it should happen, he wanted them to mean something, anything to her. It meant too much to him. “I can’t fix you there, Lucy.” Flynn could stitch her external injuries, but using him for a quick mend of those left inside was not the situation he wanted. It was not, if previously considered, how he imagined them coming together.

Flynn wanted Lucy possessed by her own draw. He did not want to be a rebound, something indulged in while Wyatt could not make a choice Flynn considered obvious. He cared for her too much to accept anything less than absolute conviction.  
  
“You take advantage of, uh, how I feel,” he translated. “I take advantage of how you’re _feeling_. Is that it?”  
  
He was infatuated. She was vulnerable. They each came with a weakness to be exploited but something to be gained. It was mutually beneficial, but Lucy could not say that. She did not answer.  
  
Flynn would not be her present solace and future regret. He took the decision away from her, knowing she was not in the right state of mind to make it.

When he moved forward, Flynn bypassed Lucy’s lips. He leaned over her arm, and upon the bandage, he placed a kiss, that healing remedy. The action was too innocent for him. It was too fond.  
  
Lucy wanted to tell him to stop it, stop it all, drop the act. But it was not an act. Flynn carried through with a thought in his head, a liberty taken from the fact he knew she knew.

“If you wanted to... talk,” he said in counter offer, “I do have my own room.” No one wanted to share with him. He stood up straighter and took a step back, towards the door. “But, uh, as for the rest,” he imployed a casual air, as though the possibility meant little to him, “well, let me know if the offer ever becomes genuine.”  
  
Flynn left Lucy in the medical bay, her bleeding sealed and bandaged on the outside, death by a thousand cuts enduring within.

**Author's Note:**

> Heh... Ending turned way sadder than I meant it. Whoops.
> 
> The near-kiss is inspired by the interview where Goran used the word “infatuated” to describe Flynn’s feelings for Lucy. And he said that she is aware of it. So with her feeling so forsaken and vulnerable, and Flynn being so kind and supportive, I wanted to throw in her trying to use him as a kind of rebound from Wyatt. Not cruelly or anything. Just being a bit opportunistic. Mutually beneficial, as it says. But Flynn wants their relationship to mean more than that. And he knows Lucy isn’t thinking straight. So he had to be the stronger person here.
> 
> Lucy rebounding with Flynn would hurt me the entire time I died, conflicted all the way. Yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no...
> 
> If Flynn stitched “GF” in Lucy’s arm, are those his initials or is he tagging her as his girlfriend? What a conundrum.


End file.
